ABA Journal Legal Rebels: Why Waste the Crisis in Legal Education?, by Paul Lippe (Founder and CEO, Legal OnRamp,
a Silicon Valley-based initiative to improve legal quality and efficiency through collaboration,
automation and process re-engineering):
I had the chance last month to speak to the ABA’s meeting of law school deans. The meeting was off the record, so I can’t disclose any of the group
discussions. But I can share my own observations based on what I’ve
heard from various current and former deans (and a few other senior
academic administrators) over the last few months, as well as my talk.The key takeaway for me is that law school should update its model
from “think like a lawyer” (which most often means think like an
appellate litigator) to “understand how law actually works in a specific
context and make it work better.” That would mean scholarship that
focuses less on what other scholars write and more on what happens in
practice. It would mean faculty who are more interested in the context
of modern law practice, whether in a global corporation, a housing
project or a family business. It would hopefully mean concretely
improving access to justice and simplifying compliance. …I think a plurality, if not a majority, of deans recognize that change is overdue. And as Stanford economist Paul Romer said in 2004
when speaking to venture capitalists about increasing competition faced
by America from rising education levels throughout the world, "A crisis
is a terrible thing to waste." …One piece from the talk I can report has to do with naming. Any time
you do something different, it’s helpful to have a label (think “hybrid”
car or “lite” beer), which delineates the old from the new, even though
the new of course always has many elements that are not new. For the
moment, the deans homed in on the term “Law.Next” and its correlative
“LawSchool.Next.”So let’s talk about Law.Next (we didn’t want to be parochial and call
it "New Normal") and see how that feels, and start looking for ways to
validate whether engagement helps, or develop other ideas that will help
law schools move forward.
